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"I don't think I would remind you that there's a police station actually on this blessed island. If there was a dive like Dougal's anywhere West it would be raided as a matter of course. But to shut Dougal's would be to raise hell. There are two laws in England, sir; one for Piccadilly and the other for the Isle of Dogs!" He sipped his coffee with appreciation.
"We want your advice, mistress," Dickson told her, and accordingly, like a barrister with a client, she seated herself carefully in the big easy chair, found and adjusted her spectacles, and waited with hands folded on her lap to hear the business. Dickson narrated their pre-supper doings, and gave a sketch of Dougal's evidence. His exposition was cautious and colourless, and without conviction.
It was, however, in vain that Andrew Fairservice employed his lungs in obsecrating a share of Dougal's protection, or at least his interference to procure restoration of his shoes. "Na, na," said Dougal in reply, "she's nae gentle pody, I trow; her petters hae ganged parefoot, or she's muckle mista'en."
Suddenly he pointed directly along the path towards a point where it seemed to vanish between two vast crags. "Smoke," he said. And his tone conveyed that he wished his companion to understand that he, Grey, had been right about the trail, and that Robb had been wrong. "That's Dougal's store," he went on, after a slight pause. Chillingwood looked as directed.
It was fine weather again after the rain, and a bright constellation perhaps Dougal's friend O'Brien hung in the western sky. How happy he would have been a week ago had he been starting thus for a country holiday! He could sniff the faint scent of moor-burn and ploughed earth which had always been his first reminder of Spring.
Last came the picket who had held his pole at Dickson's chest, a sandy-haired warrior with a snub nose and the mouth and jaw of a pug-dog. He was Old Bill, or, in Dougal's parlance, "Auld Bull." The Chieftain viewed his scarred following with a grim content. "That's a tough lot for ye, Mr. McCunn. Used a' their days wi' sleepin' in coal-rees and dunnies and dodgin' the polis.
The Hoose be it!" It was a journey which sorely tried Dougal's temper. The only way in was by the verandah, but the door at the west end had been locked, and the ladder had disappeared. Now, of his party three were lame, one lacked an arm, and one was a girl; besides, there were the guns and cartridges to transport.
"But if you think it worth looking into personally, say the word." "Well, my dear sir," Seton Pasha tossed the end of his cheroot into the empty grate "what else can we do?" Kerry banged his fist on the table. "You're right!" he snapped. "We're stuck! But anything's better than nothing. We'll start here and now; and the first joint we'll make for is Dougal's." "Dougal's?" echoed Seton Pasha.
The activities of the Greenwich bank seemed remote, and the desolation of the Isle of Dogs very near, touching them intimately with its peculiar gloom. A light sprang into view some little distance inland, notable because it shone lonely in an expanse of utter blackness. Kerry broke the long silence. "Dougal's," he said. "Put us ashore here."
But finally they turned a corner formed by a stack of rusty scrap iron, and found a long, low building before them. From a ground-floor window light streamed out upon the fragments of rubbish strewing the ground, from amid which sickly weeds uprose as if in defiance of nature's laws. Seton paused, and: "What is Dougal's exactly?" he asked; "a public house?" "No," rapped Kerry.
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